Stone Basin

at Ryo An Jin

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Day 12 Early Morning Philosophy

Early morning, I bid goodbye to Hong Kong, and just in time too. The heat, the crowd, and the suffocating pollution is getting to me. On top of it, it’s time for me to move on to a place with fewer people I know, so there is less politics. Politics will kill all the joy in life. Anytime you have a few Asians together there is politics. Anytime you place a few people together anywhere in the world, even, I suspect, a Buddhist monastery, there will be politics. Rather than looking into ourselves and growing as people, we resort to cruelty and violence, and this manifests big and small, everywhere in every relationship. This is how you know bad karma perpetuates. Everywhere you go, there you are. I personally love Hong Kong, because the crowds are so huge, I can disappear seamlessly and enjoy life without people, because there are so many that I am insulated from exposure. There are so many people, I don’t have to talk to anyone at all, and hence, possibly, a respite from politics. Are there real friendships in life? Maybe not, just food stall after restaurant, camera and mobile phone store after cosmetic store after shoe store after McDonalds. Yes, the McDonalds in Hong Kong are now 24 hours. I can now junk food myself to death anywhere in the world, not just the U.S. Off to Taiwan, where the economy is awful and people are depressed. The suicide rate is particularly high. Hopefully this beautiful island is exempt from the cruel typhoons this year, as one year I showed up to the 13th one in a row and many farmers have lost everything and ended up jumping to their deaths in the raging avalanches of water.